


Tartarus (where no stars shine)

by Ivaylo, skitzofreak



Series: constellations in your skin [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Rated For Violence, Rebellion, Scars, jyn week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 16:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivaylo/pseuds/Ivaylo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: She doesn’t care. She keeps running.





	Tartarus (where no stars shine)

**Author's Note:**

> Part 3 of 4, written for Day 5 of Jyn Week for the Jyn Appreciation Squad (prompt: "Scars / Rebellion"), in collaboration with [Ivaylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivaylo/pseuds/Ivaylo), aka @crazy-fruit on tumblr, who drew the cover image. She also has a great deal of lovely art worth checking out [on her blog](http://crazy-fruit.tumblr.com/).

Jyn runs.

The slime-green mud of Feldrona squelches beneath her stolen boots, the foul stench of the prison planet’s sulfuric dirt stinging her nostrils and squeezing her lungs. She’s breathing too hard, out of shape from a month in space surviving on the scanty rations the smuggling crew divvied out as part of her pathetic pay. After all, last minute hires didn’t get the good stuff from the Zabrak captain’s cabin (unless she stole it, but that was risky; mostly she stuck to the rations). Turns out she shouldn’t have bothered keeping her sticky hands to herself – the Imperials grabbed the whole damn crew and spilled Captain Katarn’s gear out into the mud of Feldrona just to prove that they could. Just so some _shtikdrek_ Imp officer could stomp on the cheap foodstuffs and make some snotty comment about how thieves never prosper.

A chain metal fence in front of her; Jyn doesn’t even slow down, just gathers her waning strength and launches herself up it, catching the links by her fingertips. Her hands are chained together, and her wrists raw from two days in the binders, so she almost loses her tenuous grip. A blaster shot burns a hole in the thin metal links next to her ribs and it gives her a burst of fresh motivation, propels her up almost another meter in one leap. Three meters from the top, maybe. On the other side of the chain link fence is a launch pad, with three spinning shuttles ready to launch. She’s almost there.

Thief or not, turns out Captain Katarn's halfway decent, standing between Jyn and the sneering Imp whenever xe could manage it. Stupid, unnecessary, but…decent. But when xe sees Jyn eyeing the nearby unguarded shuttles, xe whispers to Jyn, “Keep your head down, kiddo, you’ll live longer."

Jyn heeds this advice for all of an hour while the Imps process them into Feldrona, but she’s not interested in being a prisoner, especially not an Imperial one. She’s going to run.

So when one of the Imps unhooks her from the chain line and pushes her forward, she hammers her bound wrists into his chin, knocking him out cold, and jams his prison-standard stun-baton into the dataport of the approaching Security droid. The acrid stink of burning circuits almost blocks out the sulfur stink of the mud. Captain Katarn stomps a heavy foot on the droid’s head when it drops, xer bright red and orange facial markings dancing like flames as xe grins at Jyn and yells, “Run, then, you little fool, _run!”_

And now she runs.

Behind her, she can hear shouts, orders from furious Imperial guards, the mechanical buzz of ‘troopers, and the whine of blaster bolts. More security droids clanking out of their charging stations, converging on her location. The squish of cold mud under her feet. If she listens carefully, she thinks she can also hear the whistling laughter of a Zabrak.

But she doesn’t have time to listen carefully; she reaches the top of the fence and throws herself over. A baster bolt hits the fencetop a handspan from her face and sparks fly up, making her jerk back. She overbalances, her bound hands slip on the slick metal, and she drops to the ground with a heavy thud and a splatter of reeking mud. Her legs ache from the impact but a ‘trooper patrol appears on her right side, rifles up, so Jyn drops and rolls behind a duracrete divider leading toward the launch pads. She keeps her head tucked down because _keep your head down, kiddo_ isn’t actually the worst advice after all (and death takes the slow) so she makes it to the next barrier, then the next, diving between them with no time to stop and peer around. If she stops, she’s dead, or worse, and the Imperials are only scrambling behind her right now because they never expected anyone to actually try to run like this. Who would try to run on a prison planet?

Jyn runs.

The shuttle nearest her has an open ramp, and the engines are already spooled up, the lights flashing in launch-configuration. As Jyn ducks under a barrage of heavy arms fire (someone’s rolled out a repeater cannon, oh good, that’s all her day was missing), she sees the ramp already closing. Shit. It’s still a good eight meters away, over open ground. If she runs out there, she’s going to get shot.

If she stays here, she will probably get shot too. If she’s lucky.

She really is a little fool.

But it’s too late, death comes for the slow so Jyn takes a deep breath and puts her trust in the Fo- in something, and hurtles across the gap. Her world turns into a plethora of bright colors as blaster bolts explode around her, red and yellow and green. Something hot whiffs through her messily-cropped hair and she’s almost sure she’s leaving a handful of the dyed-red strands behind. Not important. The ramp is ten steps away, seven, four, and then she’s in, throwing herself between the rapidly closing gap between the door and bulkhead, and then she’s lying on the deck in a small, dark shuttle hold while blasters riddle the door outside. An angry voice yelling from the cockpit – the pilot doesn’t know why the ‘troopers are firing on him and he’s pissed – but Jyn lets herself take just a moment, just a second, to breathe (but death takes the slow, so it’s only a second) and then she’s up on her feet and staggering into the cockpit. The Imperial pilot is busy yelling obscenities at the control tower and doesn’t even see her come in, doesn’t see anything because Jyn lifts her shackled wrists and slams them down on the top of his neat grey cap.

He drops mid-curse, and Jyn shoves him out of the chair and takes his place without ceremony. She ignores the squawking comm and flashing screens that order her to land immediately. She’s a piss-poor pilot but she knows what a stick and throttle do, so she grabs the stick and hauls it back, shoving the throttle as far forward as it goes. The shuttle lurches drunkenly, then it screams upward into the sky, throwing Jyn back in her seat under the G-forces. She gasps, but this is clearly an upper-end model shuttle, and it clears the atmosphere in under thirty seconds (she puts her trust in…something, and something launches her out of the atmosphere and into hyperspace like a bolt from a blaster, and she would be grateful if there was anything to be grateful to).

Her crystal is hard against her throat under her dirty scarf. They didn’t take it from her.

She got away first.

The lines of the stars blur into bright blue, and Jyn is out of the chair and rifling through the Imp’s pockets before the ship has stopped humming with the transitional energy.

The pilot doesn’t have keys but he’s got a small pocketknife, and that’s enough to get her wrists out of the shackles. She’s a mess under the metal, raw skin bloody from the constant rubbing, stinking greenish dirt encrusted in the edges of the torn flesh. Jyn slaps the shackles on the Imp and kicks him with one toe into the cargo area. She won’t get far in a prison shuttle, but Altarrn is only a few hours away. She’ll have time to land and ditch both shuttle and pilot. She can catch a ride from one of the major trade hubs on the planet. And then she’ll…keep running.

That’s what she does, now that Saw’s cut her loose. Now that she’s a teenager on her own in the damn galaxy. Maybe she’ll sign on to another crew. The idea doesn’t appeal, not after what happened with Katarn’s smuggling crew (will Katarn make it off Feldrona? Best not to think about it. Ever again). But what choice does she have? She’ll take whatever she can get.

Good, that’s a plan. Altarrn, ditch the shuttle, find work. Dye her hair again, somewhere in between, and forge some new scandocs. Maybe just steal someone else’s, if she’s pinched for time.

Jyn sits back on her heels and just breathes for a moment.

No death today. No prison.

Shite, her wrists hurt.

Jyn examines the nasty marks again, concludes that they will probably scar a little. If she ever gets in binders again, they definitely will. There’s a fun thought. No, no, she’s not going to wind up like that again. She’s going to keep her head down. Death comes for the slow, but Jyn’s never been slow. She’s always been a runner.

Jyn ditches the shuttle and still-sleeping pilot in Altarrn’s biggest space port, washes her wrists in the public ‘fresher, and signs on as a handyman on a shady merchant’s ship (what choice does a sixteen year old with no work references and Imperial shackle-marks on her wrists have?) She’s off Altarrn six hours later.

She does wind up in binders again, and her wrists scar after all.

She doesn’t care. She keeps running. And running. And running.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tartarus](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tartarus) was the deepest regions of the earth, "as far below Hades as heaven was above earth," too deep for any glimpse of the sky to ever be seen.
> 
> [Feldrona](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Feldrona) was originally a Zabrak colony that eventually was turned into a prison planet. I don't think Wobani was Jyn's first experience with prison, probably just her worst.


End file.
